Mine safety advocate Tony Oppegard '80 helped his client Charles Scott Howard, a coal miner at Cumberland River Coal Company (CRCC) Band Mill No. 2 Mine, get his job back after Howard was fired for insisting on following proper safety procedures.

"Scott’s job was to monitor those seals and do a pre-shift examination
of them to make sure they were safe,” said Lexington Attorney Tony
Oppegard, counsel for Howard who has been representing Appalachian
miners against coal companies for more than 20 years.
"When Scott saw these seals were leaking water, which he complained
about regularly, and when nothing was done — in his mind to repair the
problem — he took a video camera underground and took video of various
seals with water spewing from them.”

Victorious in the end, Oppegard said Howard is a "utterly unique
American coal miner. There is none other like him in the United States,
who is a safety activist and insists on safe working conditions
underground. He doesn’t get the support of a lot of other miners, some
because of fear of losing their jobs. In a lot of ways he’s been a lone
wolf out there insisting on safe work places and the company just
doesn’t like it. He did prevail in the end. It takes a lot of courage to
stand up in a nonunion company and insist on safety, but that’s what
he’s done throughout the years.”